AMTRAK -- (House of Representatives - March 09, 2005)
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Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Congresswoman from Florida for her vision and for her leadership and ensuring that the people of America understand what is at stake today in the President's proposal to cut funding for Amtrak, which I believe, Mr. Speaker and Members, is unfair and lacking in vision.
I would like to confine my comments to focusing not only on the impact nationally as it relates to a true intermodal transportation system, but also that in the 21st Century, if we in fact are going to provide the services necessary to move goods and services and people throughout our great country, we have to have a true intermodal 21st-century system of transportation, one that allows connectivity of our cities, of our States, to ensure that we handle the growth necessary to continue to improve the economy.
And that is why the President's proposal in his budget is unfair and it is lacking in vision. We saw on 9/11 the impact when our air service across the country was virtually grounded, and how dependent we are upon our daily rail service as it relates to not just intercity travel but our commuter service as well, in which Amtrak provides a tremendous amount of service in terms of our cities for commuter purposes.
And what we saw was a greater reliance in which the northeast corridor exceeded the amount of passenger daily usage of our air transportation for months and months and months as we attempted to reconstruct our service.
Mr. Speaker and Members, let me give you the California perspective. Amtrak operates an average of 70 inner-city trains in California alone, over 200 commuter trains per day in California. In 2004, Amtrak serviced over 9.3 million people in California, providing service in 70 California cities.
It employs over 3,589 California residents. On top of that, when you look at the top five busiest corridors in Amtrak across the country, three of them, three of them are in California. Number two, the Pacific Surfliner provides service for over 2.3 million riders in California and it increases annually, 7.6 percent last year over 2003.
The number third busiest corridor in the Nation is the capital corridor, from San Jose to Sacramento to Auburn. It provided over 1.1 million riders last year for over a 2.3 percent increase over 2003.
And number five, the San Joaquin services, which I have been involved with for many years from Bakersfield, Oakland, Sacramento provides service to over 700,000 riders annually.
And when you take into account the cutbacks in regional airline service for mid-sized and smaller communities, in many cases this is the only public transportation service people have on a regional basis.
When you add to the commuter trains that operate in California that combined carry over 66,000 commuter ridership daily in the Bay Area and Los Angeles and San Diego and Oceanside areas, you understand how important it is to California.
As a matter of fact, California has the second highest ridership in the Nation, second only to New York. In addition to that, our State provides, and I have been involved as was mentioned earlier, when I have served in the State Legislature over $70 million a year to enhance the existing Amtrak service.
California does more than any State in the Union to provide additional funds to improve our inner-city and commuter service. When you look at it over the last 15 years, California has provided $1.5 billion to improve and upgrade our services. Amtrak in return during that same 15-year period has provided over $400 million to upgrade and to improve our services.
The bottom line is we estimate in California alone in the next 20 years that we are going to have a 300 percent growth in our inner-city service and commuter service in California to sustain the population growth that is estimated to be another 15 to 17 million people.
And we are going to depend mightily on an intermodal transportation system that combines the best of our air service along with our rail service, along with our roads. And therefore it is fitting and appropriate this afternoon that we have this discussion, and I want to again thank the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown) for setting this time aside.
We all know, if we study our Nation's history, that every mode of transportation going back to the 18th century has been subsidized in one form or another.
The canal system that first began to connect our States, the Erie Canal and the other canals, was what? The Federal Government helped finance that for the purpose of promoting interstate trade and commerce, and we continued into the 18th and 19th centuries. The great emancipator, President Lincoln, in the middle of the perhaps most difficult time in America's history, the great Civil War, when inflation was running rampant and deficits were huge, decided to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
In the 20th century, we have seen the expansion in our interstate freeway system that has been subsidized by Federal, State and local revenues. Every port and harbor in America today has some form of local, State or Federal funding.
All modes of our transportation historically for three centuries have had a subsidization to what? Promote trade, commerce and move our people around. So, therefore, when we take that in light of our history and where we are today and where we want to be in the 21st century, it is absolutely essential that we be promoting and expanding our intercity rail service throughout the Nation to ensure that, in the 21st Century, Americans have the proper type of intermodal transportation system that is reflective of the world's number one economy.
For all of those reasons, Mr. Speaker, I urge the Congress to act appropriately and to ensure that we properly fund our Amtrak service throughout America today.
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